Tyrone Grandison leaving Commerce Department

Tyrone Grandison, the deputy chief data officer for the Commerce Department, will be leaving his position with the agency next week.

In a blog post on Medium, Grandison announced that will be stepping down after helping Commerce stand up numerous data-centric projects since his appointment last July.

“Building a team of the best data scientists and engineers to support and super-charge Secretary [Penny Pritzker]’s data mission has been a joy that I will cherish,” Grandison wrote.

Along with Chief Data Scientist Jeff Chen, Grandison was hired to help stand up the Commerce Data Service, a group housed inside the Commerce Department that helped its sub-agencies rapidly create and develop projects to achieve their missions.

Over the past year, Grandison has overseen or contributed to a number of high-profile open data projects, including:

• The Opportunity Project, an open data portal that combines data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Agriculture, and other agencies to give communities information on jobs, housing, transportation, schools and other neighborhood amenities.
• MIDAAS — Making Income Data Accessible as a Service — an API, website and developer toolkit that gives the public the ability to explore income data from the Census Bureau and accelerates developers’ ability to integrate government data in their projects.
• The Commerce Data Academy, an in-house, online training portal for employees interested in data science and web development.
• Hack the Pay Gap initiative, a joint effort of the Presidential Innovation Fellows, the Commerce Department and the White House’s Council on Women and Girls.

Last year, Grandison received a FedScoop 50 award as “Most Inspiring Up and Comer.”

In his blog post, Grandison said he will announce his next move in September.

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